How did the Anglo-American Relationship become ‘essential’?
Kathleen Burk
Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History
University College London
For over seventy years, the British, and, in particular, most British governments and British
journalists, have referred to the Anglo-American „special relationship‟. If one puts aside the
unfortunate Revolution, and the nearly-forgotten War of 1812, it can be claimed – and has
been by many – that from then on, the two countries marched, if not precisely hand in hand,
at least closely together. There was the occasional hiccup, but on the whole, sharing as they
did a common language and common ideals, throughout their joint history the so-called
Anglo-Saxon powers were as one against the enemy. This is, of course, a caricature, but not
much more than some of the celebratory pieces which have appeared over a number of years.
I do not believe it. The relationship has been much rockier, and, thus, more interesting.1
The difficulty is, the term „special relationship‟, from its conception by Churchill in
1940, has overwhelmingly been used by the British. This does not mean that the Americans
have never used the term: they sometimes do when one head of state or government makes a
visit across the Atlantic, and they have occasionally used the term in governmental papers.
But I have long believed that only weak powers publicly claim a special relationship with a
stronger power: strong powers have no need to do so, though a public statement to that effect
might be useful for diplomatic purposes. For that reason alone – that it can imply inferiority
– you will virtually never hear the term used by a British diplomat. „Essential‟, however, is
acceptable.
For one thing, it strips out the sentimentality.
In social and personal
relationships, there are advantages in sentimentality. This is not least because it lubricates
relationships, and often facilitates agreements.
1
But in the jungle that is international
A number of the ideas in this essay can be found in a more developed form and buttressed with extensive
references in my Old World, New World: The Story of Britain and America (London, 2007).
1
relations, it can be self-defeating. It can lead a country to expect aid and comfort from
another when the latter‟s national interests appear to recommend otherwise. Of course, a
close relationship can induce favourable decisions which might not otherwise be taken: it has
indeed happened between Britain and the US, notably in the Falklands War. But a strong
sense of reality, in tandem with a sense of commonality, is better by far than weeping about
special relationships in the headlines.
This discussion should not begin with the invocation of a „special relationship‟ by
Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940, because the balance of power would be
overburdened towards the US. It is pertinent here to go back briefly to the early nineteenth
century. On a personal note, twenty-five years ago, when I began writing about AngloAmerican relations at some length, I took for granted what I had learnt in California in high
school, which was that after 1815, the US and Great Britain had had very few points of
conflict, bar a bit of argument over geography in the Pacific Northwest, in particular over
who owned which chunk of the Oregon Territory. Other than that, Great Britain faded from
sight as the US began to follow her Manifest Destiny, about which no one even hinted that it
might rather be called the extension of the American empire. But two points soon became
clear. One was that the US and Great Britain did come into conflict, even violent conflict, a
number of times, and war itself was threatened twice, once by each side. So much for those
who claimed a post-1815 Era of Good Anglo-American Feelings.
But on the other hand, it rapidly became obvious that one reason that the US could
extend itself in almost complete safety was because the Royal Navy patrolled the Atlantic.
How could the US itself have defended the Monroe Doctrine if more than a half-dozen
foreign ships had appeared on the horizon? 2 The presence of the Royal Navy was hardly
2
Independent states in the Western Hemisphere were not to be interfered with by an outside power, nor were
any further colonies to be established.
2
altruistic on Britain‟s side: no more than the US did Britain want other powers to encroach
on the Western Hemisphere, where she still held a number of colonies and was economically
dominant in Latin America.
This factor in American security became of tremendous
importance after the Munich crisis in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared that
Germany might combine subversion in Latin America with an invasion of the Western
Hemisphere. What was particularly worrying was the lack of a US Atlantic fleet: since
1919, the US navy had concentrated on the Pacific Ocean, because the Royal Navy had
secured the Atlantic for both countries. In short, for the US, whilst the relationship was not
particularly special, it was most assuredly essential.
It is widely known what happened during the Second World War.
It is worth
remembering that, even with Churchill‟s plea for American help and his proclamation of a
special relationship between the US and the British Empire and Commonwealth in 1940 (not
just with the home islands) it was only in 1943 that the US had as many as, and then more,
troops in the field than did Britain. It had been clear for centuries, to anyone who bothered to
think about it, that not for long could an island outweigh a continent.
Whilst Britain
controlled, or at least had unchallenged claim to, the Empire, and more of the globe was red
than the individual patches of yellow or blue or green, she seemed mighty, at least to the
Americans. But once the colonies were ripped away by the Japanese and threatened by the
Germans, it became increasingly clear just how weak Britain was without the buttress of the
Indian Army or Malaysian tin or South African gold. Would she still be of any use, once the
war was over?
Was there any need, on the American side, for any particularly close
relationship at all?
For the first couple of years after the end of the war, the answer appeared to be no.
Although the Combined Chiefs of Staff continued to work together, this process was
eventually subsumed into NATO. It seemed more important to the US government to work
3
out a secure and acceptable relationship with the Soviet Union than with Great Britain, whose
empire made a continuing close relationship with her still distasteful to many Americans,
both in government and amongst the general public. Yet, as the USSR became increasingly
threatening, a close relationship with the UK became more desirable to the US. As a State
Department policy paper set out in April 1950 – note the appearance of a significant phrase:
No other country has the same qualifications for being our principal ally and partner as
the UK. It has internal political strength and important capabilities in the political,
economic and military fields throughout the world. Most important, the British share
our fundamental objectives and standards of conduct.
It continues:
To achieve our foreign policy objectives we must have the cooperation of our allies and
friends. The British and with them the rest of the Commonwealth, particularly the
older dominions, are our most reliable and useful allies, with whom a special
relationship should exist. This relationship is not an end in itself but must be used as an
instrument of achieving common objectives. We cannot afford to permit a deterioration
in our relationship with the British.3
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider what is required for a strong and even
durable alliance.4 First of all, it requires international interests in common, and, in particular,
a common enemy. The first alliance, or quasi-alliance, or sort of alliance, between the US
and Great Britain lasted from mid-1917 to the end of 1918. There was, of course, a common
enemy, Germany, but President Wilson did not consider that the US was allied with the
3
Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1950, Volume III, 19 April
1950, pp. 870-9.
4
Kathleen Burk, „Is There an Anglo-American Alliance? Or a Pact? Or anything at All?‟, Melissa Yeager and
Charles Carter, eds, Pacts and Alliances in History: Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions
(London, 2012), pp. 109-37.
4
Entente Powers, but was only an Associated Power. Any type of agreement was made easier
by the fall of the Tsar, but even so, the secret treaties amongst the other Powers were
grindingly distasteful to him. Thus, he found it difficult to believe that the US and Great
Britain had many interests in common. Granted they were both democracies. Granted that
they shared some international interests. But the British were focused on expanding the
empire into the Middle East; and whilst they agreed on self-determination for the successor
states of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, this ideal did not extend to Britain‟s
own colonies and protectorates, nor to those which she planned to acquire in East Africa and
the Middle East.
Furthermore, the US was determined to force Britain to give up the Anglo-Japanese
alliance, an alliance which had served Britain very well since 1902: it had meant that the
Royal Navy could redeploy elsewhere most of the ships on the China Station. The US saw
the Japanese as a future threat to their own interests, and did not want to face the combined
might of Britain and Japan. Of course, it would have been unthinkable for Britain to fight
against the Americans, but it was conceivable that the continuation of such an alliance might
at least require neutrality. The British chose the Americans, but then, during the 1930s,
discovered that the Americans were loath to join Britain in defending their joint and several
interests in the Far East. There were a number of reasons for this, not least the Depression in
the US and general uncertainty over what US foreign policy should be, but, nevertheless, the
outcome was that Britain had very little support. In short, during and after the First World
War, the strength of international interests was not such as to encourage any continuing
alliance, even an informal one. This aspect of alliance glue, however, changed dramatically
after the Second World War.
A second factor in a strong and durable alliance is the ability of both, or all, members
to make a significant contribution. There are various ways in which this can be done. Most
5
obviously is the existence of a significant number of well-equipped armed forces which will
actually fight. The ability to produce and maintain armed forces of such power and ability
that other countries wish to ally with you requires a strong economy. Great Britain possessed
this in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but in the twentieth century, wars severely
damaged the economy – she lost 15 per cent of her pre-war wealth in the First World War
and another 25 per cent in the Second. This would have great significance after 1945.
The third component of a durable alliance is a reasonably favourable view of the other
country. In a period of extreme crisis, such as the two world wars, Britain was able to hold
its collective nose and ally with Russia and then the Soviet Union, but in each case the
alliance ended, acrimoniously, after the end of the war. In the nineteenth century, any AngloAmerican alliance would have been impossible – indeed, the War of 1812 largely took place
during the Napoleonic War. For the remainder of the century, various problems of greater or
lesser importance between the two were settled by agreements, but these were not alliances,
which imply a future link. The British viewed the US with condescension – Oscar Wilde‟s
„The Canterville Ghost‟ is a particularly enjoyable example – but with a growing sense of
American power as the century drew to a close. This power was industrial and economic, not
military, and cartoons of and articles about the Americanisation of England began to appear.5
Curiously, President Wilson could have enhanced this apprehension, when in 1916 he
exhorted the World Salesmanship Congress in Detroit to „go out and sell goods that will
make the world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them to the principles of
America‟.6 The idea of equating selling with citizenship is an unusual one. It was after the
end of the First World War that American popular culture began to make a great impact in
Britain, with the Daily Express in the late 1920s pointing out that whenever a woman sat
5
See, for example, W.T. Stead, „The Americanisation of the World‟, Review of Reviews Annual (1902), pp. 1170.
6
Quoted in Victoria di Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge, Mass., 2005), p. 2.
6
through an American film, she was temporarily an American citizen.7 Thus by 1945, there
was a combination in Britain of those who loved Hollywood and American jazz and Glen
Miller and those who disliked and distrusted the lowering effects of American popular culture
– or any other kind of American culture, for that matter. But the American Dream, that if you
went to America, and worked hard, you too could rise economically and socially no matter
what your birth, retained its attraction no matter what you thought of the culture. Today,
even those who dislike the States nevertheless fight to get a green card.8
American views of Britain were fairly standard over the nineteenth century: they
disliked the condescension but loved the landscape, disliked the empire but loved the social
scene, disliked the class system but loved the literature – unless they were Irish, in which case
they intensely detested the whole country. With the growth of American power, however,
came a change in American perceptions of Britain, accelerated by the misplaced belief that
Britain had protected US ships from German ones during the 1898 Spanish-American War.9
There was much less resentment and, with the First World War, a willing acceptance of an
association with a country with which it shared many interests and beliefs. But this was a
fragile development, and it was badly hammered during the interwar period, when the two
countries fought over the size of their respective navies and over the British war debts. By
1939, there was real uncertainty as to whether the US would come to Britain‟s aid.
The British never really understood the bifurcation of American feelings about
Britain, which strongly manifested itself during the Second World War. On the one hand,
Americans very much appreciated that, like the US, Britain was a democracy, with freedom
of speech, of religion, with all of the First Amendment freedoms enjoyed by Americans.
7
Mark Glancy, „Temporary American Citizens? British Audiences, Hollywood Films and the Threat of
Americanization in the 1920s‟, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26/4 (2006): pp. 464-5.
8
Necessary for a non-American citizen to be able to work in the US.
9
Burk, Old World, New World, p. 414.
7
They also appreciated that the two countries were allied against a rabid tyranny of the worst
sort. But: it is arguable that the Americans were as one in disliking the Empire. Churchill
appeared not to accept this. Life magazine in 1942 did its best to make it clear in an „Open
Letter‟ addressed to the „People of England‟: Americans, they wrote, still lacked a consensus
on war aims, but „one thing we are sure we are not fighting for is to hold the British Empire
together‟.10 Interestingly, this was one conviction which was to change after 1945.
The fourth component of an enduring alliance – and it should not be underestimated –
is habit.
The habit of working together developed during the Second World War and the
wartime comrades continued to work together in the first decade after the war – although this
was shattered at the top level by Suez. Habit is a topic to which we will return.
Looking at the post-war period, the alliance between the two countries has been, and
is, pre-eminently a military alliance. Part of it is mediated through NATO, but this is
multilateral, and it is the bilateral relationship which is the focus of this essay. There are two
main bones: one is nuclear and one is intelligence. The nuclear relationship goes back to the
beginning of the war. In essence, a combination of British and European scientists made the
fundamental scientific discoveries and British-domiciled physicists outlined how a bomb
could be made. In the spring of 1941, a memorandum containing this information was turned
over to the Americans, who built it and used it. In 1944, an agreement was reached which
stated that, even after Japan was defeated, full collaboration between the two countries in
nuclear research for military and commercial uses would continue.11 By the end of the war,
however, the Americans were determined to maintain complete control over the research,
10
Life: 12 October 1942.
Two refugee scientists in Birmingham, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, produced the eponymous
memorandum. The agreement was the Hyde Park aide-mémoire, which can be found as Appendix 3 in John
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations 1939-1984, 2nd ed. (London, 1984).
11
8
development, and use of nuclear energy. The legal vehicle was the McMahon Act of 1946,
which effectively cut off any exchanges of information with any country, including the UK.
This decision surprised and appalled the British. After the shock came anger, and
after the anger came the determination to build their own bomb. In May 1947, the Cabinet so
decided, as Ernest Bevin told the House of Commons, „His Majesty‟s Government do not
accept the view … that we have ceased to be a Great Power‟12 and the mark now of this
status was to be a nuclear power. There were other reasons, of course: this was before
NATO, and the Americans might again withdraw from Europe, so the manufacture of a bomb
was, according to Prime Minister Clement Attlee, essential for defence. Russia was huge,
Britain was small, NATO had not yet been established, and her only defence was
deterrence.13 But the bomb was for use against a friend as well as an enemy: the Cabinet
was convinced that if the UK did not possess the bomb, the US would pay no attention to
British foreign policy interests.
The British had absolutely no help in developing the bomb, which was successfully
tested in 1952. Unfortunately, by that time research had moved on, and by 1954, both the US
and the USSR had successfully tested their H-bombs. In July of that year, the Cabinet had to
decide whether or not the UK should follow suit. There was little argument over the matter,
with Churchill arguing that „we could not expect to maintain our influence as a world power
unless we possessed the most up-to-date nuclear weapons‟.
The Chiefs of Staff had
emphasised that a British H-bomb was vital because „it would be dangerous if the United
States were to maintain their present monopoly since we would be denied any right to
influence her policy in the use of this weapon‟, whilst Lord Salisbury, the Lord President of
12
Confidential Annex, Minute 1, „Research in Atomic Weapons‟, GEN. 163/1 st meeting, CAB 130/16; 437
H.C. Deb. 1965.
13
Francis Williams, Twilight of Empire: Memoirs of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, as Set down by Francis
Williams (Westport, Conn., 1978), p. 119.
9
the Council, hoped that it would increase their influence over the Americans by ensuring
„more respect for our views‟.14
And, above all, there were two compelling strategic
arguments. Firstly, US bombs were directed against Soviet cities, but Britain wanted to
attack Soviet air and submarine bases from which the Soviets could attack the UK; and
secondly, the UK had no certainty that the US would defend her – would she trade Chicago
for London? Britain had to possess her own serious deterrent.
And so she built her own bomb, which was successfully tested in May 1957. In the
other area of research, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, Britain was considerably ahead of
the US. In 1955, the first Calder Hall reactor had come on stream. This was the first of the
so-called „Magnox reactors‟, which produced both electricity for commercial use and
plutonium for bombs. The UK now had the independent expertise – and, with the production
of plutonium, the independent resources – to make her a useful partner to the US. In July
1958, the two countries signed the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. By this, the UK
received information from the US on the design and production of nuclear warheads and
fissile material; it also authorised the transfer of materials between the two countries, with the
British, for example, supplying plutonium. Earlier, in 1954, the two countries had signed the
first joint targeting agreement, and in 1957 the US proposed, and the UK agreed with alacrity,
that the US deploy a number of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the UK. The weapons
and specialised equipment cost the UK nothing, and the British took over the sites as soon as
their personnel were trained.
Altogether, these agreements provided the basis for the future nuclear alliance. There
was, however, an important hitch in 1961 and 1962. The US had promised to supply the
Skybolt missile to the UK, but it continued to fail its tests, and the US then publicly
14
Ian Clark and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The British Origins of Nuclear Strategy, 1945-1955 (Oxford, 1989),
Chiefs of Staff quotation on p. 214, Salisbury‟s quotation on p. 215.
10
announced that it was useless. Macmillan demanded that the US supply Britain with the
Polaris missile, which was carried by submarines deep under the oceans, ideally making it
impossible for an enemy to detect and destroy them. Many in the US government preferred
not to do so, believing that it was vital that the US continue to control the use of nuclear
weapons. Macmillan threatened the end of the Anglo-American alliance: „We have gone a
long way in this nuclear business … but if we cannot agree, let us not patch up a compromise.
Let us agree to part as friends‟.15 This might appear to be a hollow threat, but the US had, at
that point, a sad lack of friends: the relationship with Germany was tense, whilst that with
France was unspeakably bad. It would have been more than careless to have tossed Britain
aside – as the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, said, „We have to have somebody to talk to in
the world‟.16 The Statement on Nuclear Defense Systems was „a monument to contrived
ambiguity‟, but it included the phrase „on a continuing basis‟, as in „the US will make
available on a continuing basis Polaris missiles (less warheads) for British submarines‟. 17 It
was this phrase which made it „legally straightforward‟ for the US to sell the Trident missile
to the UK,18 and it was the recent decision to purchase the next generation of Trident which
makes it likely that the nuclear relationship will continue to provide one of the major planks
of the alliance.
The other is the intelligence relationship. In this case, Great Britain enjoyed decades
of leadership, until this too changed. Early in 1916, Sir William Wiseman, who had been
gassed at the first Battle of Ypres in 1915 and invalided out, was sent to the US as head of the
15
Quoted in David Nunnerley, President Kennedy and Britain (New York, 1972), pp. 157-8.
Quoted in Henry Brandon, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent’s Memoirs from Roosevelt to
Reagan (London, 1988), p. 164.
17
George Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New York, 1982), p. 267.
18
President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan, „Statement on Nuclear Defense Systems‟, Joint Statement,
Nassau, 21 December 1962, PREM 11/4229, pp. 59-61. Solly Zuckerman, Monkeys, Men and Missiles: An
Autobiography 1946-88 (London, 1988), 614-15.
18
President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan, „Statement on Nuclear Defense Systems‟, Joint Statement,
Nassau, 21 December 1962, PREM 11/4229, pp. 59-61. Solly Zuckerman, Monkeys, Men and Missiles: An
Autobiography 1946-88 (London, 1988), 614-15.
16
11
British Military Mission to the US. He quickly impressed both President Woodrow Wilson
and Wilson‟s advisor, Colonel E.M. House, who used Wiseman as a conduit to the British
government, enabling them to bypass the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, whom
both disliked. Wiseman was consulted by them on the most secret matters, and whilst he
acted in the best interests of Great Britain, he also worked to bring the two countries together.
He was even more useful to the British than the Americans realised, because he was the head
in America of the equivalent of MI6 – in short, the British had a mole in the White House.
Wiseman was not their only source of information, however, since the British had from early
on in the war been intercepting American cables, finding the codes and cyphers amusingly
simple to decode. They especially loved Wilson‟s own code, messages using which he typed
up himself. This makes it even more ironic that Wilson was deeply impressed by their ability
to intercept and decrypt German diplomatic and naval radio traffic.
And it was not only the British who were listening to America. The story goes that
later in the war, six of the American code books were missing and a seventh, neatly wrapped,
firmly tied, and accompanied by a courteous note, had been returned to one of the American
embassies by the Japanese, either because they had finished with it or because they already
had one.19 The Americans had set up their own intelligence effort, which hugely expanded
during the war both in size and capability. In 1919 the State and War Departments set up the
so-called Black Chamber as the first American peacetime unit devoted to encrypting and
decrypting. However, during the interwar period, the American intelligence effort declined.
The most famous incident was Secretary of State Henry Stimson‟s closing down of the Black
Chamber in 1931 with the immortal words, „Gentlemen do not read each other‟s mail‟. He
has been excoriated for this, but it has also been argued that the Black Chamber was of little
19
James Thurber, Alarms and Diversions (New York, 1957), p. 119.
12
use, as it suffered from a lack of leadership and had little to do.20 Military and naval efforts
continued, however, with a focus primarily on Japan, and in September 1940 the US Army‟s
Signals Intelligence Service broke the Japanese PURPLE machine cypher.
In Britain, considerable success was enjoyed in the interwar years by the Government
Code and Cypher School. This had been established early in 1919, the same year as the
American Black Chamber, by the decision of the War Cabinet to establish a peacetime
cryptographic unit; it was to morph into Bletchley Park once the war began. During the
1920s, Britain broke the diplomatic codes of a number of countries, including that of the US
but not of Germany, whilst during the 1930s, its main successes were with Japanese, Italian,
and Comintern traffic. But whilst the roots of the Anglo-American intelligence relationship
had been planted during the First World War, they had barely survived the interwar period. It
was the Second World War which established the co-ordinated and combined effort which to
a great extent continued after 1945.
In July 1940, William „Wild Bill‟ Donovan, the future head of the wartime Office of
Strategic Services or OSS and later of the CIA, travelled to Great Britain as Roosevelt‟s
special envoy.
Churchill briefed him, George VI met him, and most of the heads of
intelligence included him in secret meetings. As a result, upon his return Donovan urged
Roosevelt to sanction „full intelligence collaboration‟.21 At this point, however, Whitehall
found it difficult to take the fragmented American intelligence effort seriously. Not only did
the three services refuse to work together, but there was neither a specialised foreign
intelligence agency nor a centralised system of assessment. For example, the US army and
navy argued over which service was to decrypt the Japanese intercepts – the army had broken
20
Robert G. Angevine, „Gentlemen Do Read Each Other‟s Mail: American Intelligence in the Interwar Era‟,
Intelligence and National Security, 7/2 (1992): pp. 1-29, quotation on p. 17.
21
Christopher Andrew, „Anglo-American-Soviet Intelligence Relations‟, in Ann Lane and Howard Temperley,
eds, The Rise and Fall of the Grand Alliance, 1941-45 (London, 1995), p. 109
13
the code, but some of the decrypts dealt with naval matters. Roosevelt decided that the army
would decrypt on odd dates whilst the navy would decrypt on even dates; nothing was done
on weekday evenings or on Sundays. Churchill, who was intensely interested in intelligence
matters, would not have stood for such a ramshackle effort. Fortunately, in the summer of
1942, Donovan set up the OSS.
Meanwhile, there was in late 1940 the construction of a signals intelligence, or sigint,
alliance, much more important than human intelligence, or humint. However, although the
Americans delivered a copy of the Japanese PURPLE machine to Bletchley and showed them
how it worked, the British were more circumspect with the Americans.
The British
decryption of the Luftwaffe Ultra remained a deep, dark secret, for fear that it would leak in
the US. Churchill wanted it kept secret that the British were still decrypting American traffic,
although this seems to have ceased once the Americans entered the war. Close intelligence
co-operation developed during the Battle of the Atlantic, possibly the longest and most
complex battle in the history of naval warfare.
In the spring of 1943, Anglo-American co-operation was formalised by the signing of
the BRUSA (British/USA) agreement on the treatment of sigint and by an exchange of
missions between the US Special Branch and Bletchley Park. Both sides agreed to exchange
completely all relevant information on signals, codes and cyphers used by the Axis powers;
the US was to take care of Japan, whilst Britain would deal with Italy and Germany. The
only problem of liaison which BRUSA failed to solve was not between the US and Britain,
but between the American army and naval sigint agencies, which reflected a lack of central
direction from the White House – Roosevelt neither knew nor cared about intelligence in the
way that Churchill did.
14
Nevertheless, Roosevelt‟s willingness to endorse such close collaboration laid the
foundation for the enduring post-war sigint alliance, which was extended to include Australia,
Canada and New Zealand. Negotiations took place episodically from February 1946 until the
final text of the UKUSA Agreement was signed in June 1948. However, this treaty reflects
US resources and therefore power. The US is designated the First Party, whilst the other
countries are designated Second Parties, and thus the US, and specifically the National
Security Agency, is recognised as the dominant party. This represented a reversal of the
wartime Anglo-American sigint relationship that existed during the war. The countries
provide and share listening posts around the world. Both the US and Britain maintain
collection and decrypt centres, the UK at GCHQ in Cheltenham and the US at the National
Security Agency. Theoretically, the two exchange full information, but lack of confidence on
both sides as to the other‟s ability to maintain secrecy periodically emerges. The episode of
the spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (two of the so-called Cambridge Five) damaged
American confidence in Britain, but this was as nothing compared to the 1960s, when the
head of counterintelligence in the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, was convinced that Prime
Minister Harold Wilson was a KGB agent. Of considerably more long-term significance is
the decision of the UK Court of Appeal in 2010 that MI5 reveal secret intelligence obtained
from the Americans; according to Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Justice, in April
2012, „the CIA was already holding back some information amid fears that it could come into
the public domain through the British courts. “The Americans have got nervous”, he said,
“that we are going to start revealing some of their information and they have started cutting
back, I am assured, on what they disclose.”‟22 At this point, however, the two countries still
work closely together.
22
Nicolas Cecil, Evening Standard, 4 April 2012, p. 2.
15
To return to the four requirements for a durable alliance: where do the two countries
now stand? The first component is the existence of common international interests and, in
particular, of a common enemy – after all, no one makes an alliance unnecessarily, since the
countries‟ actions can be circumscribed. There were essentially two common interests during
the twentieth century: Germany and then the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War,
attention has shifted.
Now it is primarily terrorists, with the desire to neutralise their
breeding grounds. But there is also apprehension about present and future areas of conflict:
the Arab-Israeli problem; the threat of a rising Iran and its desire to dominate the Middle
East; concern about how the „Arab spring‟ will develop and its resolution, if there is one; and
real apprehension as to the Afghan-Pakistani imbroglio, including the active interest in the
area of a number of Powers. In a category of its own is the unstoppable rise of China and
indecision about how to react to it. There is no doubt as to the existence of joint international
interests.
The second factor is the ability of both members to make a significant contribution.
With regard to the US, the ability is not an issue, although the willingness sometimes is. The
ability of the UK can be an issue. Curiously, at the end of the Second World War, and for a
quarter-century thereafter, the US believed that one of Britain‟s major contributions was
geography.
Baldly, the US suddenly recognised the strategic value of the empire and
Commonwealth. Indeed, this new appreciation of the value of the British Empire was one of
the most spectacular changes in American perceptions of the world and of Britain‟s place in it
to have occurred since the Revolution. According to a State Department policy statement in
June 1948, „The policies and actions of no other country in the world, with the possible
exception of the USSR, are of greater importance to us.‟ Written during a period of very
tense negotiations over the Marshall Plan, the statement continues: „British friendship and
cooperation … is necessary for American defense. The United Kingdom, the Dominions,
16
Colonies and Dependencies, form a world-wide network of strategically located territories of
great military value, which have served as defensive outposts and as bridges for operations.
Subject to our general policy of favouring eventual self-determination of peoples, it is our
objective that the integrity of this area be maintained.‟23 Or, as it was later put by Frank
Wisner, the head of covert operations for the CIA, „wherever there is somewhere we want to
destabilize, the British have an island nearby‟.24
Therefore, it is clear why the Americans sometimes had mixed feelings about the
decline of the empire.
However, when it came to the withdrawal from East of Suez,
announced by the British in 1967 and finally completed in the early 1970s, the feelings were
wholly unmixed.
The Americans were enraged.
„East of Suez‟, which was usually
capitalised at the time because it became almost a concept as well as a geographical area,
referred to British bases, aircraft and ships, and in some cases the deployment of troops, in
Singapore and Malaysia, the Persian Gulf, Aden and the Indian Ocean. The cost of keeping
them there was too great. The Americans valued the British bases at Singapore and Aden,
thought it useful to have the Union Jack rather than the Stars and Stripes flying in the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf and did not want to be the only western power in East Asia.
They had tried, and failed, to get the British to fight in Vietnam. President Johnson reacted
with some bitterness to this refusal, asking why the British could not send even a token force?
„A platoon of bagpipes would be sufficient; it was the British flag that they wanted‟.25 The
Americans became increasingly blunt about their disappointment, with the Secretary of State
telling a British journalist that
23
„Department of State Policy Statement: Great Britain‟, 11 June 1948, FRUS, 1948, III, pp. 1091-1108,
quotations on pp. 1092 and 1091.
24
Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2001), p.
305, quoting from Kim Philby‟s memoirs, Silent War, p. 117.
25
Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964-70, pb edn (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 341.
17
All we needed was one regiment. The Black Watch would have done. Just one
regiment, but you wouldn‟t. Well, don‟t expect us to save you again. They can invade
Sussex, and we wouldn‟t do a damned thing about it.26
The withdrawal from East of Suez was the direct result of British economic decline,
which reached crisis point with the 1976 IMF crisis.27 As her military forces declined
precipitously, Britain became of less use as an ally: the US publicly announced that Germany
was now her most important European ally. It took the British victory in the Falklands War
to restore her military value in the eyes of the US government. As a result, according to the
assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the war „was an overall plus for the British-American
relationship … [which] increased the stature of the British military at a time when a lot of us
were losing confidence in their ability to do it. It was a military feat of some significance, a
triumph of ingenuity in adversity.‟28 And George Schultz, who became Secretary of State the
same month as the British victory, was convinced that „the war had made its mark on the
Anglo-American alliance,‟ which was, he wrote in his memoirs, „now closer than at any time
since World War II‟.29
Britain fought beside the US in the First Gulf War, and in every
conflict since. Her ability to contribute to the alliance has been significant. But as economic
crisis forced huge cuts in British forces in the 1960s and 1970s, rendering their value
problematic, the same thing appears to be happening today. It is at least possible that the
2010 Coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron has decided that an AngloAmerican military alliance is no longer affordable.
The third component is a favourable view of the other country. This does not seem
particularly problematic in the US. For some years, poll results have shown that Britain is the
26
Louis Herren, No Hail, No Farewell (London, 1970), p. 230.
Kathleen Burk and Alec Cairncross, ‘Good-bye, Great Britain’: The 1976 IMF Crisis (London, 1992).
28
General Paul Gorman, „Falklands Roundtable‟, Presidential Oral History Program, Miller Center of Public
Affairs, University of Virginia, 15-16 May 2003. Available at
<http://millercenter.virginia.edu/index.php/academic/oral-history/projects/special/falklands>
29
George P. Schulz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), p. 152.
27
18
Americans‟ second favourite country, after Canada; indeed, during the Falklands War
Senator Joseph Biden said that „we‟re with you because you‟re British‟30 – a hundred years
earlier, the feeling would have been precisely the reverse. Americans love the Royal family,
and they love visiting Britain, responding to history to an extent that is sometimes missing in
the US itself.
Britain is no longer a threat either militarily or culturally, although
economically there can be some skirmishes. Matters are different in the UK. The US
continues to be perceived as a threat economically, and the very hostile takeover by the
American Kraft Foods of the British Cadbury Schweppes in 2010 only strengthened this
belief. In addition, European protectionism, of which the UK is a part, often clashes with
American protectionism, as well as with its strong desire to export.
A favourable view can change drastically with a change in leadership. The British
mostly approved of Kennedy, disliked Johnson, hated Nixon, were rather contemptuous of
Ford, were bemused by Reagan, liked Bush Senior, had mixed and changing feelings about
Clinton, hated Bush Junior and initially adored – and still like – Obama. This always affects
the British public‟s view of the US. Naturally, foreign policy can influence this view. But
many also like the US for its good qualities, for the persistence of the American Dream, for
the friendliness of the American people, for their can-do attitude, for the general belief that
problems can be solved, not just managed, for the ways in which civil liberties usually reemerge after a period of attack.
This elides smoothly into the fourth component, which is habit. People look at intergovernmental co-operation and tend to judge its strength by the relations between the two
leaders.
The
Macmillan-Kennedy,
Thatcher-Reagan,
Blair-Clinton
and
Blair-Bush
relationships were seen as close; but the Wilson-Johnson, Heath-Nixon, and Major-Clinton
30
Quoted in Louise Richardson, When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations during the Suez and Falklands
Crises (New York, 1996), p. 202.
19
relationships were not. Yet the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the State Department
continue to work closely together, sending diplomats to each others‟ offices and sometimes
exchanging each others‟ dispatches from home. The two navies are very close, from the
interchangeability of some of their equipment and supplies to the constant swapping of
personnel: officers know each other and tend to trust each other. For example, during the
Falklands War in 1982, it was probably important that there was a close friendship between
Admiral Lord Lewin, the chief of the British Defence Staff, and General David Jones, the
chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff. And as one American ambassador to London
has noted, politicians at the top come and go, but „in the unglamorous trenches of the
bureaucracy, personal relations are usually undisturbed.‟31
This happens in civilian life as well. Academics know about the close relationships of
the two university systems, as brains, both staff and student, drain back and forth across the
Atlantic. Plays and musicals naturally appear on both sides, and periodically one reads in the
newspaper that British plays, both in quality and popularity, are saving Broadway. American
law naturally grew out of British law – both adversarial rather than Roman – and the two
legal professions continue to maintain close links; indeed, the Supreme Court and the Law
Lords have sometimes cited each other‟s opinions. The banks and other financial institutions
on both sides have for a century frequently worked closely with each other. There are many
differences as well, but normally, more people are likely to compare television programmes
or theatre productions or novels or celebrities than to discuss the two different health systems.
In short, at all levels there are habitual relationships.
31
Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London, 1998), pp. 322-4, quotation on p. 323. Seitz was the American
Ambassador to the UK 1991-1994. „And since 1974 I had worked closely with [British diplomat] Robin
Renwick, in one capital or another, and he went to Washington as British Ambassador at almost the same time I
came to London. As ambassadors to each other‟s governments, we plotted together to make things work, and
sometimes to make them not work. I once proposed that Robin and I should switch jobs to see if anyone
noticed.‟ Pp. 323-4.
20
And so, I return to my theme of „essential‟, giving it priority as a term over „special‟.
For Britain, there is no doubt. Since 1945, the determining foreign policy of the British
government has been to co-opt American power in support of British interests. There is more
than one aspect of this. Certainly the US with its power protects Britain, and any policy on
which they agree has a more than even chance of being implemented. But Britain also
benefits from reflected power: in the EU, for example, the fact that other powers believe that
there is a special relationship between the two countries, and that Britain therefore has a
special link to the President and other sources of American power, increases her influence.
The cliché that Britain „punches above her weight‟ is a cliché because it did, and perhaps still
does, express a truth. But there is a cost, and that is that the UK must be a dependable ally,
even when she would prefer not to be. This does not mean that she must always agree with
the US – the complaints at the UN, for example, as well as at the State Department, that the
British frequently fail to support the policies of the American government, can be expressed
with some bitterness. Yet in times of crisis, and of war, the UK always supports the US. As
it happens, it can work the other way as well: the interests in Latin America which the US
sacrificed (at least for a time) by supporting the British in the Falklands War were not
insignificant.
The relationship is not „essential‟ to the US, but it is highly desirable. Without the
nuclear relationship, the US would not have Holy Loch as a base for its nuclear submarines,
and it is less certain that B-29 bombers, with their nuclear payloads, or, later, Cruise missiles,
would have been stationed in Britain. In the early years of the Cold War, the only way that
the US had of reaching the USSR was from air bases in the UK. It was only after the end of
the Cold War that these bases began to be closed. But this argument should be modified
slightly. What is essential is Royal Air Force Station Fylingdales, with its intelligence
21
abilities and applications:32 losing access to this coverage, as well as to Cheltenham, would at
least temporarily derail significant American intelligence capabilities.
The announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama
during the latter‟s visit to the UK in May 2011 that the Anglo-American relationship is
essential rather than special seems, until evidence emerges to the contrary, a most useful
result of Obama‟s visit. With any luck, the relationship can be a more balanced one, with the
British more willing to take risks which could jeopardise American support. There can be a
drawback to being best international friend, because there is a strong risk of being taken for
granted. Yet they did, and probably still do, hold a powerful position in Washington. A few
years ago, a State Department official tried to describe the situation:
It‟s been said that there are on most major US national security decisions a number of
important inter-agency viewpoints. There‟s what does the State Department think, what
does the Defense Department think. What do the Joint Chiefs think … What does the
intelligence community think about the facts, the analysis. And what does the British
Embassy think, or the British government, vicariously through the British embassy?33
One British ambassador to Washington made it clear that, whilst this can be intensely
enjoyable:
… it is also risky. It is one thing to find out and influence, quite another to get so close
that you risk being drawn into Washington‟s inter-departmental rivalry, like a sleeve
32
It provides a ballistic early warning system for both the UK and the US; it supports the US‟ developing
Missile Defense System; it detects, reports (to both governments) and tracks satellite launches; and it supports
UK forces worldwide through the Satellite Warning Service. http://www.raf.mod.uk/raffylingdales/
33
David Gompert, „Falklands Roundtable‟. Gompert was in 1982 deputy to the Under-Secretary for Political
Affairs and part of Secretary of State Alexander Haig‟s mediation team. It may be that the working relationship
is no longer quite as close.
22
being caught in a piece of machinery. I had to be very careful not to let this happen and
damage the embassy‟s reputation for trustworthiness and impartiality.34
It is this interrelated working relationship that makes it desirable for both, even if
essential for only one.
Yet, I cannot, I am forced to admit, entirely ignore the concept, and reality, of a
special relationship. It is facilitated by the common language, although that also allows
criticisms to be read and heard. There is the joint history, although it is well to remember the
words of Dean Acheson, referring to the late 1940s, that „Of course a unique relationship
existed between Britain and America – our common language and history insured this. But
unique did not mean affectionate. We had fought England as our enemy as often as we had
fought by her side as an ally.‟35 Nevertheless, there is a strong link. This arises from a shared
political system of democracy and the rule of law, from the shared experience of World War
II and gratitude for the Marshall Plan, from the fact that the American legal and economic
systems are based on British models – they even share a business cycle, although this is
probably an aspect of the relationship about which few are aware. Americans and the British,
however, are aware of, and frequently enjoy, each others‟ popular culture. And so on. My
conclusion must be that the relationship is both moderately essential and truly special. I just
think that it should not be talked about it quite so much.
34
Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential: The Controversial Memoirs of Britain’s Ambassador to the U.S. at the
Time of 9/11 and the Iraq War (London, 2005), p. 210. „To establish where a policy debate has got to, where it
is likely to go, and, along the way, how to influence it, you have to advance on a broad front. Day in, day out,
my staff would spread out across Washington like an army of prospectors. Each evening they would return with
what they had discovered. We would then examine the raw material like panhandlers looking for gold dust in
the dirt.‟ Pp. 209-10.
35
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969), p. 387.
23